In a wireless environment, it is desirable to measure and maintain the quality of the carrier signals. In systems with multiple subcarriers, such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, it is advantageous to determine the quality levels of each of the subcarriers. One of the existing methods is to feedback the channel quality information of each subcarrier directly, as in the case of the wired technologies of ADSL/VDSL, in which the channel variation is relatively slow. In contrast, in a highly time-varying mobile wireless channel, the direct feedback of channel quality information is inefficient and incurs significant overhead because of the higher number of subcarriers and the need to update the information more frequently.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for an improved wireless network that includes a system and method for efficient and effective feedback of subcarrier quality estimation in OFDM and OFDMA systems.